This story is part of our 1,000 stories campaign. What’s your story?
Name: Saba Asad
Business Name: GLOW Boutique, a fashion designing company
Type of Business: Designer Wear
Business Location: Karachi, Pakistan
Reason for starting
I started designing as a desire, a need to create to something. I started with a home exhibition of casual tops in which my total investment was $100. Due to high demand, one exhibition lead to another and another followed by owning my own boutique, fashion shows, racks in stores across Pakistan, Dubai and America.
How do you define success?
Success is when I go to an event or a mall and I see women dressed in my label feeling beautiful in it! Success is when I am out for dinner and on the next table there is a lady looking gorgeous in on of my outfits.
Biggest Success
Balance between my work and family, while running such a big production unit and sales. I have made such an efficient system with such well trained staff that I spend most of my time a home with my family socializing ect. Yet, I’m on top of everything — purchasing, manufacturing, inventory and coordination. I have achieved this after extreme hard work and running around for 5 years!
What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it?
The biggest challenge is to create new designs, with new fabrics, embellishments, patterns color combinations and being cost effective. Dresses have to be liked and bought by the customers even at a premium price. Another challenge is managing my staff, the production team, the sales team, marketing and inventory management. Over the past 6 years the Pakistani market of ready to wear designer dresses has grown tremendously. Now, there is much more variety the larger stores have factories producing quality ready to wear dresses at a much lower price. Today stores like Gul Ahmed, Nishal Linin Al karam are manufacturing ready to wear dresses and selling at low and competitive prices. Along with running my own boutique I have rented rack space in multi-brand stores. Today I stock my dresses at Fashion Pakistan Lounge, Brands Just Pret, Soiree, Collage and Jiya.
Who is your most important role model?
Oprah Winfrey